I came across an article yesterday as featured in The Local, a Fort-Greene edition of the New York Times. The Americans are so much better than us Brits at understanding just how Home Staging, Property Styling, Property Marketing – call it what you will, gets results when you have a property to sell.

A good many years ago now, my parents upped sticks and moved to the US with me and my sister (quite another story). However, in buying and selling property over there we came across ‘Property Stylists’ who worked alongside Real Estate Agents, they even worked from the sameoffice to offer a complete marketing package. Apart from an exceptional few, we’ve still not quite achieved the same over here.

None the less ‘we’ perservere and battle on with the idea of awareness and bringing a complete package of property marketing combined with staging and styling to the masses!

It isn’t rocket science and, although property sellers in New York tend to think mainly in terms of apartments, the article is still relevant to all who have a house to sell in a difficult market. You can read the full article by Geri Charles here but these are the highlighted tips:

With the importance of staging in mind, here are three tips on staging your home to sell it:

1) It’s not about you, it’s about the buyer.

What you may consider tasteful may not be to the buyer’s taste. The fact of the matter is, interior décor is subjective. The living room painted chocolate brown with one big red stripe in the middle may be a proud do-it-yourself moment for you, but it may give the buyer flashbacks to a slasher scene with Freddie Krueger. Your best bet is to keep it simple with neutral plain colors.

2) It’s all about a room’s “star” feature.

Maximize your home’s best features by accentuating them. Draw more attention to a fireplace, for example, by mounting a wrought iron sculpture right above it. You can also minimize the room’s least appealing feature, like a window directly facing into a neighbor’s bathroom, by using a stained glass window decal to block the view.

3) Less is more.

Get rid of all clutter. I repeat, get rid of ALL clutter. Although you may be proud of your 30-year record collection, or photographs taken at last year’s 10-year family reunion, those items take up space. The less you have on display, the more the potential buyers can envision themselves living there.

If you need advice on styling, selling or buying property and would like to discuss working with me … my main website can be found at www.propertystylingcompany.co.uk. Contact can be made through this wordpress site, by email or by calling 07789 488446.